Alright…I’m gonna cheat just a little here. I’m going to use Brian as my number 11 AND my number 12 (and I’ll use the 12th post to review all the dates!)…because we had THAT much fun together, and have been out a few times now.

(Now, before you go getting all excited… wait to hear the “catch”… sigh…)

First of all, I just texted Brian (real name) to ask him if he had any requests for his psuedonym, to which he replied, “how about Ali Benizir Kamal?”…. what a NUT! This guy is so silly…and adorable… and… well – I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me start from the beginning.

I met Brian on Zoosk. He messaged me first and we got a little banter going… (to the left)

Somehow, in all the flurry of discussion, and me doing my cursory check of his profile to see what he looked like, if all the you’res had apostrophes, and make sure there weren’t any “alot”s, I jumped in, and missed an important piece of information. A piece I ALWAYS check, but for some reason…didn’t. We’ll get back to that later…

So, Brian and I met up at Sullivan’s near the Galleria.

We had the BEST bartender who made all sorts of suggestions and conversation about food and wine and scotch, and even took our picture for us. Brian was easy to talk to from the beginning – very real, down-to-earth, funny, and all with the smooth voice of Matthew McConaughey. No lie. If I close my eyes, it sounds just like him. MMMmmmm…

I’m just sayin’…

At one point, I dropped my earring as he bent down to get it for me (sweet), I remarked about how I have a problem with losing earrings. He replied, “well, at least this time you didn’t dance it off.” And I knew that he’d been keeping up with my blog (where I’d mentioned that in one of the recent posts). I said so and he replied, “Well, it wouldn’t be good sense to go on a date without doing my RESEARCH, now would it?” So cute.

So we chatted. We talked about our children, our jobs, the dating scene… and it was really nice. Brian has this twinkle in his eyes when he’s listening to you – the kind where I kept finding myself pausing mid-sentence, distracted by this light in his eyes and face. For me, there was definitely a spark.

So cute.

Oh… at one point, he even told me that I had a bit of spinach in my teeth. Now that’s a good guy right there. I mean – sure, it was a moment of embarrassment – but how much MORE embarrassed would I have been to discover later that it had been there the whole time? Points, Brian.

We only had about an hour and a half because I was meeting up with a friend to go to a concert. Toward the end of our time, I made a comment about really looking forward to this concert and Brian, very tenderly, put his hand on my knee and said, “Oh man.. it’s too bad you’re really looking forward to it… that means there’s no chance of convincing you to skip it.”
(enter stomach butterflies here… handsome man in a cowboy hat and blazer, with his hand on my knee, letting me know he obviously likes me enough to want to spend more time with me… sigh…)

He took care of the bill, despite my offer to split it (such a gentleman), and stood up to hug me as I left. No kiss. And, though part of me was disappointed, another part respected the fact that, (as he texted me the next day), “an hour of time together didn’t seem like enough to make a kiss ok.” Indeed, Brian. Indeed.

So,… I knew I wanted to hang out with him again. But… here comes the catch.

I went back to Brian’s profile page, to check it out again (not sure exactly why), and there it was – jumping out at me as if to say, “Stupid GIRL! How could you have MISSED this??”

……..the catch

Yup – Brian’s agnostic.

NOOOoooooo!!!!

He’s SO great! But, as you all know – the faith thing is a big deal for me. Many other potential suitors have fallen by the wayside for this reason, and I’m sure many more will. But, man… it never stops being so disappointing.

In my optimism, I decided to ask him about it, in the middle of our making plans to hang out again… thinking maybe he’ll say, “Oh, yeah – I put that on my profile, but really I love Jesus.” You know… cause THAT happens all the time…

Here’s a bit of our text conversation on the matter…

I felt like I’d spent so little time with Brian on our first date, and I could tell he’s a person of thoughtfulness and depth, so – at the very least – I should hear him out and see what it is he really believes… and go from there. So we made plans to go out on date #2 (or #12 for this series’ purposes)… and…
You’ll have to read #12 to hear about it.